Mission, Overview & History

Mission

Chemical, Biochemical and Environmental Engineering Mission Statement: Our mission is to instill a capacity for life-long learning based on competence in chemical engineering principles coupled with critical thinking, cooperation and communication skills.

Department Overview and History

In 2011, The Departments of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering merged to create the Department of Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering (CBEE). UMBC’s CBEE program joins a select group of colleges that have Chemical Engineering and Environmental Engineering located in the same department and is uniquely poised to take advantage of the synergistic opportunities available between the two fields.

On the undergraduate level, CBEE offers an ABET accredited degree in Chemical Engineering with three “tracks” available for the students: Chemical Engineering, Biochemical Engineering, and Environmental Engineering. On the graduate level, separate MS/Ph.D. degrees in Chemical and Biochemical Engineering and Environmental Engineering are available. Faculty commonly interface between the two programs, taking advantage of the significant overlap between the disciplines.

CBEE is fortunate to be affiliated with two outstanding centers that are headed by CBEE faculty. The Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education (CUERE) is headed by Dr. Claire Welty. CUERE’s mission is to advance the understanding of the environmental, social and economic consequences of the transformation of the urban landscape through research, conferences and symposia, support of university teaching programs and assistance to K-12 education. CUERE fosters interdisciplinary approaches to environmental science, engineering and public policy. The Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST, headed by Dr. Govind Rao) is a multidisciplinary group of researchers that focus on the development of sensing technologies: the chemistries, methods, systems and devices used in measuring various substances of interest to biotechnology, medicine, the environment, and homeland security.